Bloody funny, that. The accents, I mean.
Every “factory-fortnight”, all the shipyard workers from the River Tyne would pack the family up to Scotland for the traditional family holiday in cheap digs on the sea front. At the same time, all the shipyard workers from the Clyde would do the same thing, and head down here to Tynemouth and Whitley Bay. Staying in the same cheap bed and breakfasts, and doing pretty much everything their Geordie compatriots would be doing north of the border. I often wondered why everyone didn’t just stay where they were. Anyway, I seemed to make a lot of Scottish holiday friends back then. Close as blood-brothers for two weeks, then gone forever after. Even though Amy and I were local kids, that swimming pool was an exotic visit for us; maybe two or three times a year, in a good summer.
And then that terrible, terrible thing happened.
No one ever told me this, but I reckon it was Amy’s death that led to the closure of the pool. Two weeks after the funeral, the gates were chained. Thirty-odd years later, and the place still haunted me.
First, let me tell you what happened on that Thursday morning when the Edda Dell’Orso ran aground.
I guess you must have seen the television news reports about the oil slick that washed ashore and what it was doing to the seagulls and the guillemots. I’ve heard it said that more people were enraged about what was happening to the seabirds than what had happened to the crew. Right or wrong, I guess people felt that it was the men’s fault at root, and that the “dumb” animals were suffering the consequences. I’m an animal lover, that’s why I spend so much of my spare time working with the RSPCA and the RSPB; but I would never put animals before people, the way that some animal lovers do. Anyway, there was one hell of an outcry.
And I was down there on Tynemouth beach with the other volunteers, doing my bit. Trying my best not to scare to death the oiled-up gulls and the other seabirds which were bobbing on that tide of black filth; carefully trudging waist-deep through all that foamed-up crude oil in my waders and trying to get the poor buggers passed back to shore without getting my eyes pecked out. A difficult job in more ways than one; mess around too much trying to get your hands on a seabird and the chances are that it’ll die of fright before you’re able to get it back to where it can be cleaned. Same thing with the cleaning operation. The washing and cleaning is a gruelling, painstaking operation. No matter how careful you are, it’s an arduous and distressing experience for them, and it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a bird suddenly just die in my hands while I was trying to get the oil and the shit out of its plumage, no matter how gentle I was trying to be.
It was a particularly distressing experience on that Thursday morning. The oil was so thick close to shore that the waves just weren’t “breaking” anymore. Undulating black ripples flowed around me as I worked. A lot of the birds had been early morning feeders, and we hadn’t got there until just after ten. Consequently, there were a lot of dead gulls as we made our slow way south down the beach. A lot had drowned in that oily morass, others had struggled to be free, their wings hopelessly gummed until they’d died of exhaustion.
And all the time we worked our way down the beach, I was aware that we were getting nearer and nearer to the abandoned swimming pool. I tried to keep its presence out of my mind, tried not to let those memories overwhelm me. To a great extent, it worked. The needs of those birds were so immediate that they outweighed the bitter memories. But even though the waves weren’t breaking because of the heavy overlay of oil, I could still hear the sussurant rush of the sea further out, and every once in a while, it brought it all back to me with a vividity that made me want to turn around and wade back to the beach. Luckily, there were twelve of us out there that morning, all relying on each other; so the thought of letting them all down, in what was a painstaking team effort, kept me going.
Then someone cried: “Over there!”
I turned to look back. It was Lorna Jackson. At first I thought she’d hurt herself, when I saw that there was a dark smudge right across her brow. Then I realised that it was oil, wiped there accidentally by her own hand. She was pointing urgently down the beach and when I turned to look I could see what had so alarmed her. A sea bird had become trapped in one of the swimming pool’s sluices; a three-foot-round aperture set into the base of the pool’s sea wall. The rocks and the wall were stained by years of green and yellow sea-encrustment, but now the area around that sluice and the rim of the aperture were smeared with the Edda Dell’Orso’s jettisoned filth. Right in the middle of that opening, wings flapping in distress as it bobbed up and down on a black mass, was a gull. Unlike most of the birds we’d come across, it still had a glimmer of white in its wings. Perhaps it had just come down on the rocks beside the sea wall, too hungry for pickings to take any notice of its fellows’ fate; but it didn’t seem to be as badly oiled-up and that in itself made it a prime candidate for rescue.
“I’ll get it!” I yelled, before anyone else could respond, and surged back to the beach. It was maybe fifty yards to the sea wall.
I’ve thought about why I responded so quickly.
Sometimes I think it’s to do with everything I’ve just told you. The bird not being so badly oiled-up and everything. Now I know it had to do with something altogether different. There were a million and one reasons why I should have kept away from that swimming pool after what happened to Amy. I’ve said it was a place that haunted me. More than that. On the grim grey days of my depressions, when nothing in the world seemed to make sense anymore, or when I was tottering on the edge of that pit of melancholy, almost ready to let myself fall. my thoughts always returned to that swimming pool, no matter how much I tried to prevent it.
Maybe that day I had a chance to grasp the nettle.
Perhaps I saw the opportunity to do something I’d thought about doing for a long time.
Not so much bearding the lion in its den, because there was no fucking lion in there. Just the echoes of those bygone days, keeping me awake at night. Now, I had a chance to go where I’d dreaded. Does that make sense? I didn’t want to go in there, couldn’t have gone in there just with the idea of laying my personal demons to rest. But hell, now there was a reason. That bird would die. And maybe. just maybe. setting foot in there might go some way to easing my pain. Even as I watched, the bird was being sucked in through the sluice, out of sight and into that hateful place. There was a collective moan behind me as it vanished, but I turned as I ran, oil splattering the sand from my waders, and I waved:
“Okay. It’ll be okay. I’ve got it.”
There was a concrete ramp on the beach, maybe a hundred feet long, leading right up to the rusted and padlocked front gate of the swimming pool. The fence was wire mesh, so I knew that I could climb it if I had to. Not knowing whether my sense of urgency had to do with the plight of the bird, or my need to just get in and out of there as quickly as possible, I hopped the last few feet on either foot as I pulled off my oil-stained waders and dropped them on the ramp. I yanked at the padlock and a fine cloud of brown rust furled and blew away on the sea-breeze. The fence seemed to vibrate away on all sides; a strange noise, like the “singing” that sometimes comes from telegraph wires. That sound affected me badly and I didn’t know why. Back on the beach, the others were continuing with their job, but were still watching me. Gritting my teeth, I hooked my fingers through the mesh and climbed.